


wendy moira angela mine

by kwritten



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Doctor Who, Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: 9 love and side-eyeing 10, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/F, Gen, Mentions of Caspian/Susan, Sadness, Sibling Bonding, The Problem of Susan, fight me, mentions of canonical deaths, no hero worship of the doctor, oh yeah: Clara is the TARDIS, other Pevensies in flashbacks, this is a story about children who grew up the wrong way and nothing ever fits - here be angst, vague Susan/Clara!TARDIS
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:38:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: all children grow up.except one.(isn't that where the story always ends?)let's make it a beginning.(aka: susan doesn't want to rescue anyone and wendy doesn't want to be rescued, but they save each other from something more dangerous than a dragon)





	1. Darling, dear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clytemnestras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/gifts).



And then she grew up.

 

That’s how the stories end, isn’t it? 

 

With the boy running off with children at his heels, an endless parade of souls to form into his own image, content to play pirates and Indians to infinity and there’s nothing left to break his heart because children are just a jumble of scratches and bruises and broken parts that only adults can feel and heal. There’s a hilarious bit of tragedy in that, in the boy so broken that growing up becomes impossible, in generations of younglings following in his footsteps only to find a very different ending. 

 

Wendy Moira Angela Darling, well - she grew up. 

 

She moved into her own room and was given long skirts and a maid to dress her hair in a pompadour and was expected to receive guests in the tea room in her morning dress while working on detailed fancy-work as if there isn’t a basket full of socks and shirts that need mended in the basket under her chair. And the problem was, she was beautiful, and she grew up as though her bones were created to be long and lean and covered in thin, soft skin. She grew up as though nothing about her had ever meant to be a child at all. She was made in the womb to be a woman and not a girl. 

 

Her sweet smile and darkly sensitive eyes are always a fashionable hit at dinner parties and soirees, she glides across the dance floor as if her toes are only skimming the surface of the ground and she is somehow floating, her laugh is a small twinkle that can light up the most cantankerous uncle and put at ease the matronly aunts who sit in corners in their mourning with their knitting and stiff backs. She is knowledgeable and charming, enjoys the opera and theatre and horticulture, is niether inept at politics nor un-womanly in her opinions. She is young and yet with an edge of sadness that makes her more beautiful, more mysterious, utterly transparent and yet unknowable. 

 

Wendy Moira Angela Darling, well - she never fully grew up. 

 

That’s what the rumors contest. 

 

That she runs through the house in her bare feet waving a wooden sword over her head long after her brothers put away these antics for good, that she rides her horse bare-back when the family visits the country estate and can climb a tree better than the farmhands, she can be seen in winter with her hair down long in a braid that tickles the back of her thighs, with war paint on her face and a gleam in her eyes. She only sings songs in languages either forgotten or too Oriental to be fully understood. And if you look carefully at her embroidery or clever little still-lifes, they always detail wild scenes of adventure and war and faraway places. She laughs too loud with a wide, open mouth and wears her brothers’ trousers and talks in a harsh, unforgiving voice. They say she is a Suffragette much to her father’s dismay, and has been known to argue vehemently with members of the House of Lords in a  _ most _ unwomanly fashion. She smokes little brown cigarettes she rolls herself and keeps in a leather case and walks with heavy, strong strides like a man with her hands in her pockets and a smile like she knows something you don’t. 

 

They say she’s turned down at least three marriage proposals with a laugh and an ugly slap on the back like a horse jockey, without a word even being spoken to her father. Her brother Michael married and his young, sensitive wife cannot abide her presence at the dinner table, which has caused much concern amongst both sides of the family. John, the elder, takes her about the city with his fellow officers when he is home, letting her drink whiskey in dank pubs in crowds of men as though she were just another brother instead of a sister. There are occasional blurry photos of her leaning into the arm of another woman or laughing in the crook of a man’s ear, ducking into an alley or a pub or a taxi at ungodly hours of the early morning. She wasn’t exactly gossip-fodder, but the crowds that seemed to oscillate around her like she was the sun were the kind to be under constant scrutiny. 

 

Wendy Moira Angela Darling, well - she wasn’t supposed to ever be this free. Not in this kind of a world, anyway. She was too much of everything, all her edges poked through and scarred everyone around her. 

 

“I heard Michael tell a joke the other day,” John smirked as he sprawled across the couch in Wendy’s sitting room, still in the suit he’d worn to the opera the night before, a bowtie slung carelessly over one shoulder and a peculiar stain on one knee. 

 

Wendy looked up from the dress shirt John had brought her with a large tear in the shoulder and winked, “Was I the punchline of this joke, dear?”

 

She still called John  _ dear _ and Michael  _ baby _ , as if they were her own children and she refused to acknowledge that years before both had grown taller and stronger than her, sprouting hair along their jawlines and scars on their hearts as deep and beautiful as her own. 

 

“Aren’t you the punchline of every joke in this family Win? Keeps father distracted and mother from fretting too much over my disreputable bachelorhood,” John sunk lower on the sofa and put a pillow over his face, as if the burden of his own notorious lifestyle was too much even for his own broad shoulders. 

 

His sister laughed at him then, a big, open-mouthed bark of a laugh that would have shocked the ladies of her mother’s acquaintance, but seemed somehow so feminine and honest it was impossible to rebuke. She loved her brothers equally - in childhood. There is something so  _ defining _ and isolating about flying over the city skyline as a child with a fae savior and a Tinkerbell. But as they all grew taller and older, it was in John’s sulky moods and exasperating lectures where she found solace and rest and laughter. Such a serious boy to grow up into a strangely reckless man. 

 

Well, they all had changed - or hadn’t changed - in ways that years alone could not fully attest for.

 

“Keeping me honest, Win? Isn’t it your job to bring out the very worst in me?” the gangly boy - grown and manly - raised himself up into a sitting position, lurching for the cup of tea that had, in the time between the girl Wendy kept around the house for such purposes had poured it and now, gone cold and bitter. John choked a bit on the tea and Wendy bit back another laugh as she rang the bell again. 

 

A second ring of the bell between breakfast and tea from Miss Wendy’s sitting room when Mr. John was in the house, always meant sticky toffee pudding and steaming hot cocoa or whatever else Mrs. Hubbard was able to dredge up from her cabinets or send the girl to buy from vendors wandering up and down the street. 

 

A second ring of the bell between breakfast and tea from Miss Wendy’s sitting room when Mr. John was  _ not _ in the house, always meant hot rum and butter with fresh biscuits smothered in honey. 

 

Miss Wendy claimed with a laugh - eating fresh strawberries over the kitchen sink much to Mrs. Hubbard’s initial dismay - that if she was to accept visitors alone in her own sitting room like a proper lady, she absolutely must be full of drink and sweets and bread. “ _ There’s no other way to live, Hubbard my love _ ,” she called as she tromped through the house in riding boots with her dogs skittering about, “ _ then as if you are still only seven of age in short skirts and have been given the sudden freedom to eat and do whatever you please! _ ” In the beginning this foolhardy and uncivilized approach to life had filled Mrs. Hubbard with unease and she’d immediately begun inquiries into other homes. The night Miss Wendy brought in a young waif about the age of five and indeterminate sex under a lifetime’s collection of the city’s dust and soot, fed and bathed and dressed the poor thing as if it had sprung from her own body, Mrs. Hubbard watched from the corner of the room, tears pooling in the corners of her eyes, and became Wendy’s most stalwart defender. That waif became the kitchen maid, for a time, and was named Angela after her own darling Miss Wendy, and then was sent off to a proper school once it was deemed she was civilized enough to do so. Mrs. Hubbard became accustomed to small children of dubious origin wandering about her kitchen and to a mistress that came and went at strange hours in strange clothes with stranger people, for she loved her Miss Wendy as much - if not more - as each child whose life was plucked out of the gutter.

 

A second ring of the bell when Mrs. Darling was in the house meant a second pot of tea with nothing on the side. A second ring of the bell when Mr. & Mrs. Michael Darling were in the house, meant a tray of lemonade or blackberry cordial and a light scone. 

 

A second ring of the bell between breakfast and tea from Miss Wendy’s sitting room when she was alone, but with the heavy scent of cigarette smoke seeping under the door, prompted Mrs. Hubbard to march up the stairs herself, throw open the window shades, and smartly suggest Miss Wendy go for a ride in the carriage or on her horse in Hyde Park for some fresh air. On days like these - which were heavy with a sense of nostalgia Mrs. Hubbard could not fully place - Miss Wendy’s eyes teared up and she hugged Mrs. Hubbard on her way out the door in a most unprofessional manner. 

 

The girl - Dorcus - eased into the room gently moments after the bell was rung, with two brown paper sacks and two large mugs with steam rising off them on a silver tray. “Miss Wendy, Mr. John.” she bobbed - her eyes sparkling nearly as much as her mistress’s. “There was a boy selling hot roasted chestnuts on my way in from the market and it was such a crisp, beautiful autumn morning I just  _ knew _ you two would find them too charming to resist.” Dorcus set down the tray and passed each a bag of hot chestnuts, bustling about the room to stoke the fire and open the curtains a little wider so the view of yellowing and orangey leaves on the streets outside could be seen better, chattering a bit about the weather and teasing John for his obvious hangover. By the time she left, John was sitting up a bit straighter and Wendy was slouched a bit lower, her feet up on a footrest and her hands busy at John’s shirt. 

 

When the door closed, John raised his eyebrows over his paper bag, “Please, can I have her.”

 

Wendy shook her head and hummed in a way that suggested this was not their first discussion pertaining to her lady’s maid.

 

“I promise only to corrupt her a little.”

 

“What was the joke, dear?”

 

John slurped noisily from his mug and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Michael is not so great at jokes, but the men he runs with don’t have much imagination and so he always appears so much more clever than he is.”

 

Wendy’s needle flew in and out of the white cloth of John’s shirtfront, in a rhythm he remembered from a wild forest full of strange creatures and silly children and before that, from the nursery, where Wendy had always been a bit more of a Nurse than a sister. His father had demanded so much from her, the proper attire and room and social graces, when she had already been the only truly stable presence in her brothers’ lives. Adulthood, he had told himself with tears in his eyes the first night without Wendy tucking him into bed, was  _ not _ what his parents had told him it was. Adulthood, he’d vowed, would never take him away from his sister again. 

 

Lounging on Wendy’s couch in her strangely concocted sitting room was about as close as John would ever get again to those long days and nights in the nursery, with Wendy at his elbow and in his ear, ready with a whisper of encouragement and a strict scolding when necessary. Some men of his acquaintance, fellow soldiers and officers, spoke of their mothers in this way - as a being that personified the feeling of safety and home. Once, John had been one of two in a small room on the third floor of the family home and had called a girl with dark hair and light eyes  _ sister _ . Once, John had been one of a dozen wild boys in a wood full of strange, wonderful things, and had called a girl with long hair and wise eyes  _ mother _ . Now, he sat on her couch and called her  _ Win _ as if that could make up for the fact that she had never truly been a girl, as if she had ever won anything besides heartbreak and walls that bound her in spaces she never fit in. 

 

John sighed deeply, “That he heard mother pray to give you some sense or at least a husband with enough for the both of you.”

 

It wasn’t a joke. It was a curse. 

 

Wendy laughed anyhow, “Joke is on her, poor little mother. Can you imagine me with a husband?” She gestured around the room, a hodgepodge of dark leather and too-bright paintings and knick-knacks from lands a world away and books both old and new and clearly dearly loved. John found it the most comforting room in the world, a bridge between this world he was forced to live in and the one he had abandoned when he’d been too young to truly understand the difference. Sometimes he saw movement on the edge of his vision which his heart told him was otherworldly, even if his mind knew it was just a trick of light. And yet, what the space said to others and would definitely say to any sort of man was:  _ Stay out, stay clear, do not disturb _ , in large red letters. “Within a month one of us would be six feet deep and the other would have to move permanently to the Continent to avoid the hangman’s noose,” she wrinkled her nose at him, pleased as punch over her own joke. 

 

John laughed hollowly in return, then turned the conversation to better things. To the trouble with Parliament and Wendy’s newest street orphan and Suffrage and the opera singer he’d had his eye on for the past fortnight but had broken his heart. She threw him out the front door with one of Mrs. Hubbard’s pasties in his hand and Dorcus winking at him from the second-floor window around three in the afternoon after a lunch of fish & chips bought from the boy on the corner and after turning away a silver plate full of calling cards. 

 

She always threw him out eventually, though never so soon that he felt like a burden and never long enough that he didn’t still feel like a visiting diplomat in her domain. She had a spare room - or three - the little home on the edge of the fashionable side of town she’d inherited from her godmother; but John never claimed one as his own. Wendy would have acquiesced and moved her life around for the sake of his comfort and damnit, she’d already given up enough of her life and hopes and dreams for him to feel responsible for any more of her hidden scars. 

 

He walked back to his flat in a building equal distance between his sister and Hyde Park - the only two places in London he cared to visit on a regular basis, dreading the silence and dust of his privacy with every step. For half-a-moment he considered hiring himself over to Michael’s, invite himself to supper after a tussle in the garden with Becca, Micah, and Jamesina; a nice cigar and scotch with Michael; a rare and stolen moment alone with baby Eliza, still soft and red - but he didn’t fancy Mrs. Michael’s disapproving tsks or the inevitable parade of debutants at dinner with hopefully eyes and too-tight corsets. Win would tell him to just get his own damn wife and then he could enjoy this kind of domestic bliss at all times, but a secret fear tugged at his heart that there was something - however indefinable - that he had lost and Michael had gained in Never, that meant they would never have the same potential for peace. That his brother had been given such sweet peace by the world, John did not begrudge him. But like a burr in his spine, he knew that any home he tried to create would be as much of a dysfunctional disaster as his father’s and would never provide the respite he so desperately longed for - probably because he wanted it so dearly. 

 

The flat was as uninspiring and impersonal as Wendy’s sitting room was a haven. 

 

John called his valet for a bath, a shave, and some tea heavily laced with cheap whiskey; then went for a brisk ride on Violet through Hyde Park, closing his eyes to feel the wind in his hair as though he was still a child who could believe and therefore fly. (He secretly believed that Wendy still could, and  _ did _ on the ballroom floors with half the  _ ton _ looking on. But then, he secretly believed Wendy could do anything.) He went to the club for dinner, to find Michael there with a group of sour-looking men playing an extraordinarily boring game of cards, and slapped his knee at every terrible joke. He let his friends drag him to a ball and then a dinner party and then the second act of an opera he hated starring the girl he claimed to love and then to a rowdy pub near the docks to drink off his heartbreak and tumble a girl with pink cheeks. 

 

On the edges of his vision was Wendy, in a silk sleeveless gown and long, lace gloves up above her elbows and something twined into her dark hair to catch the light and twinkle; laughing behind a cloud of smoke or from the arm of a man too tall and too dark and with a bit of a devilish air. Whether she was actually there, haunting his path, or not - it didn’t really matter. For John, Wendy was always at his shoulder like Tink was always at Pan’s. 

 

Did he dream, some nights in the arms of women too young and too kind and too gentle to understand the foster son of a pirate and the adopted brother of a fairy, that Wendy fit in the palm of his hand and drank poison for him and helped him to fly up up up past the stars to their true home? 

 

Only every night. 

 

Could either of them had known that across town in his perfect home wrapped around his perfect wife with his perfect children sleeping soundly in their beds, Mr. Michael Darling dreamt of an Indian girl with flashing eyes and a smile like a knife holding his  and his sister drinking poison in the palm of his hand and woke up with a hole in his heart that he could not recall the source of nor fill?

 

Well, they had all grown apart - or hadn’t - in ways that years alone could not fully attest for.

  
  
  
  
  


After Wendy had sent John off with his fully-mended shirt and a basket of goodies from Mrs. Hubbard’s kitchen, even though his landlady was perfectly competent in the kitchen and his valet she had personally hired strictly  _ because _ he’d had a finer hand than her, she took a pot of tea into her studio for an afternoon of wild painting and loud music from the phonograph. Below, Dorcus and Mrs. Hubbard taught the newest orphan how to make apple butter and made a mess and giggled and made the footman and butler - who were polishing the silverware in the dining room - feel as though they were nestled at home with their own mothers and sisters chattering below. 

 

Around seven she dressed herself and pulled her hair into a sloppy pompadour and tried to escape without Dorcus seeing her, but was promptly sat in a chair in the foyer for everything to be set to rights so that by the time her footman had called a carriage around, she was sure she was going to be late. 

 

She wasn’t. 

 

Wendy Moira Angela Darling, in a smart pinstripe suit of silver and purple and a pompadour with nary a hair out of place, spent that Thursday evening exactly as she pleased. Which was much more rare of an evening than most gossips in the  _ ton _ would presume. 

 

At seven-thirty there was a lecture at the British Museum on a peculiar strain of the African moth, where Miss Darling began and won an argument with Lady Highwater and afterwards treated said dowager and her delightful niece to a supper at a hidden gem of a restaurant. She sent them off at nine with a merry invitation to tea the following Tuesday and then hired a driver to a small theatre she knew was doing a splashing rendition of  _ King Lear _ \- catching only the second act and shedding tears of pure ecstasy. The director ushered her backstage after curtain call and she spent a glorious couple of hours surrounded by actors and their lovers, drinking cheap vodka and smoking cheaper cigarettes and laughing during a shouting match over a particular passage of Proust. She took home Regan and her small Italian lover, leaving them in the spare room after a treat of champagne and fresh apple butter on stale bread toasted over the open fire. She fell asleep alone, sweat still covering her brow from a night of adventure and pleasure, and dreamt of a girl the size of her palm drinking poison that she may continue to live. 

 

The girl was maybe her or wasn’t or was someone she was yet to meet, but either way she woke up alive. 

 

She grew up,  _ The End _ . That’s how the story goes. 

 

No one bothers to tell you what comes after. 

 


	2. the things we hide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Susan finds a blue box and together they chase stars she knows He'll never find - they're just shadows and mirrors, the three of them.

During a lull in the conversation, Susan glanced down at the paper cup of coffee in her hand. Well, the people of this era called it coffee, as far as she could tell it was mostly sugar and milk and something  _ he _ called “heaven” but she was pretty sure was just a chemical her body would regret ingesting later in the day. She wasn’t bored - not in the strictest sense - but there was something so restless about the time she found herself in that the relative  _ stillness _ of being there as she was created a conflict that resonated in her bones. 

 

They’d needed a break, she said.  _ Take me somewhere …  _ she’d whispered to the ship before closing her eyes. And the darling girl (such as she was) took her to a time that was angry and sad and moving and still and confused and wise, but not - it turned out - in any immediate threat. And so she’d stayed. 

 

There’d been no running through corridors, no secret missions, no spies, and no wars to stop or alter. Except that there was so much more than that. Little, tiny micro-aggressions that filled her with a glee she had not felt in a long while. 

 

He’d left. Gotten in his box and gone away in the middle of the night. 

 

She didn’t mind. She got a job at a library and a room in a shared Victorian and began a blog about politics and started dating a girl in the final push of her doctorate in Physics. They stayed up late and argued about the stars and Susan almost (almost) grew accustomed to the sky again, stopped constantly seeking constellations that could not be found. Not because she was in love, with the place or the time or the girl, but because for the first time she felt as though she didn’t  _ have _ to be. 

 

Susan swirled the coffee around, smiling at the mermaid icon on the side of the cup and wondering if there was a way to get him to stop bringing her lattes every time he showed up. She hated them and it almost felt as though he knew this. He should be able to read her lies from her truths after all this time, but no one ever had and so she took it for granted that he only saw what she allowed him to see.  

 

Oh yes, he stopped in from time to time, sometimes a bit more bruised than the last, his smile had always been quick, a bit self-deprecating, a bit ironic as though he himself didn’t believe that smiling was a practical or natural thing to do - yet there were moments in his visits where the grin that so easily spread across his face was just a beat or two later than it ought to have been. She was seeing him in his natural state for the first time, after several years of traveling with him.  _ He was meant to be seen this way _ , she wrote in a journal she prayed the Physics-girl never found,  _ in bits and contradictory pieces, not in a straight line. He is less abstract when you meet him out-of-order, less slippery, somehow easier to hold on to. If you wanted to, that is. _

 

Which she didn’t. 

 

She’d seen him in a straight line, had grown with him in her own straight line (such as it was) and he seemed as fragmented as her. Mirrors should never become travelling companions, and yet that’s all he seemed to want in his floating box in space. Boys and Girls like him, growing in spits and starts like the jagged green blips of a heart monitor. 

 

It was exhausting to be around. She preferred him like this, on the edges of her life, filling in the cracks with his smiles and adventures and probably that’s all he was really looking for as well. 

 

“Are you bored yet,” he said. He rarely asked her questions, only threw statements into the air as if it was the world he wished to hear from and not Susan. 

 

She hummed. She wasn’t bored and she wasn’t satisfied. It felt like life without fighting and that suited her for the moment. (Even if she didn’t know what life really was without a fight in it somewhere.)

 

“Are you in love yet,” he winked at her, though presumably he knew the answer to this as well. Seeing as they were remarkably the same in this area. 

 

He seemed younger today, rougher around the edges where sometimes he was soft. Eventually, for him though in the past in some moments for her, he would find someone else - someone (a girl she figured) (a girl as beautiful and wonderful and dangerous as a girl could be) who would soften him out and make that smile feel more natural. Today  _ love _ came out from between his lips as a curse rather than a gift and she tried not to laugh at him. When he was young (he was always young) (he’d never have to live twice and she found this to be his greatest flaw), there was a bitterness and anger that she couldn’t quite take seriously. 

 

“No, I’m not in love,” she took a gulp of her latte and tried not to shiver as the sugar overwhelmed her senses, “and it’s quite lovely actually.”

 

“You aren’t living, then,” he said harshly and then left, pressing a hard kiss on her temple before storming off. 

 

He’d stayed much longer the last time, almost three days - she made him go shopping and he flew her to Paris for a festival of sorts and they’d gotten drunk on a gorgeous wine under the stars and city lights and he seemed sadder and older than she had ever known him. It had felt like a goodbye. 

 

The girl from behind the counter sidled up to Susan, took the latte gently out of her hand, and replaced it with something strong and black, before bustling along back to work. Susan lost herself in her writing for an hour or so, the sun setting behind buildings too tall and far away for her to see, street lights filling the empty space with light in a way that she had once found unsettling and now gave her a certain, strange comfort. 

 

She walked home in the dusky glow of night in a city full of light, watching couples parade into overflowing restaurants and teenagers laugh open-mouthed on the sidewalks outside clubs beating out sound that hid within it music of some type or another. 

 

As she pulled the keys out of her bag and began walking up the stairs to her door, he suddenly came up beside her and grabbed her elbow. 

 

“Come along, Sue,” he shouted in her ear. “We have a damsel in a tower to rescue.”

 

She shrugged off his hand and looked at him coolly, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly as she took in his new face and new eyes and new coat and new ferocity. “Well, that took much less time than usual,” was all she said before ushering him inside. 

 

“Sue, no time for games, it’s time to get on,” he slapped his hands together and rubbed them enthusiastically, his long-coat somehow both a part of him and apart from him, moving at will instead of command. 

 

“Are you younger than before? If so, how do you know me?” Susan walked into the kitchen, calling out the question to him over her shoulder. 

 

He followed in a stride that was so unlike  _ her _ Doctor that she nearly threw him out on his ass and slammed the door behind him. None of that puppy-like loping, long limbs akimbo, a different sadness lurking behind his eyes. She put the kettle on and began the busy work of making tea. 

 

“Do I  _ seem _ younger?” this pleased him. 

 

What a vain baby she had taken up with. She shook her head at the box of biscuits in her hand and ate three, even though they belonged to her roommate Judith and in all ways, Susan adhered to the house rules. Rule number one being:  _ Don’t eat anyone else’s food. _

 

He peered at her in a way that reminded her of the Hollywood romantic comedies her friend Brian was always dragging her off to on a weekend. Smouldering and preening and mooning in a dreadful combination. “You’ve never seen this face before!” he crowed with pleasure and fear crept up her spine. “Well that’s a first, the old girl must have gotten her dates mixed up!”

 

She smiled primly back at him as she chewed on a fourth cookie, there was no need for a response. They had always understood each other’s silences.   

 

His lips were thinner and pulled back into an almost canine smile. He was older. He was somehow sharper. He moved more quickly, as if racing  _ towards _ something whereas before he was always slinking  _ away _ . What had happened to the girl that softened up all those edges? What happened to the peace that she had started to see creep up behind those eyes? 

 

He was dangerous now.

 

He had always been dangerous. 

 

The similarities were more alarming than the differences. 

 

“Well,” he gave her another look, as though he was disappointed that she hadn’t fallen in love with him, “If you prefer the old get-up I can always just…”

 

“No,” she handed him a cup of tea and smiled a smile he should have known was a lie. (When had she discovered that he had always been seeing all of her?) (When had she forgotten that she let him?) “I’ve been itching for a good rescue mission, it’s frightfully dull around here.” 

 

She looked into new eyes and tried to imagine loving them as she had the old, but he’d already grabbed her hand and whirled her away from the life she had built as if there should be no reason for her to say no. 

 

She had said  _ no _ to those other eyes whenever she felt like He’d needed a little humility and those eyes she’d grown to love had twinkled at her.

 

It seemed unlikely that she’d see that twinkle ever again; though He’d never be too old for a good dose of humanity.

 

_ All children grow up, except one. _

 

Isn’t that how the story goes? Isn’t Susan the best one to ask? She’s only grown twice as it happens, which she has on good faith is more than most. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The first time Susan turned 18, she was in the middle of a long debate with a centaurion ambassador before she realized how little it mattered. She’d been wearing a crown on her head for over five years by that point, had known the weight of a kingdom of people for much longer. While Lucy galloped in the forests and fields with the satyrs and nymphs and other creatures of their new realm, and Edmund apprenticed himself on every handyman, carpenter, blacksmith, artist, and bard he came across, and Peter spent months at a time hidden in the dark mountains with his soldiers hunting down every last beast that had aligned themselves with the White Witch. Susan didn’t have the heart to point out that despite Lucy’s aversion to adulthood, she was soon about to hit puberty and no amount of running from that fact would make it any less true. She didn’t have the heart to point out that Edmund turning himself into a sponge was more about him running away from his own insecurities and inner demons than any newly-discovered penchant for schooling. She didn't have the heart to point out that no matter how many of their old demons Peter killed, it would never feel the hole he built in his childhood heart during a war that proved him a boy and took his father then peace then home from him without respite.    
  
Queen Susan, the Gentle, ruled her new kingdom much in the way she had her old. She held Court every day that she could, settling disputes and healing old wounds - Reconstruction was never light and always necessary. The Queen who sat most literally on the throne provided for her, gave counsel, sought out lost family members, paid recompense for the dead, threw banquets, officiated weddings, was the friend and confidant and crusader for every voice that reached her ear. Cape Caravel was once again a royal residence, and Susan made sure the world knew it.    
  
She worked herself to the bone and back again.   
  
A bruised and rather chagrined Peter remarked to Edmund at one of her carefully planned events, "Everyone needs to feel in control of their surrounding, dear ol' Su' just takes it a bit more literally than the rest of us."   
  
Edmund had snorted in a manly sort of way - if there was such a thing - and quipped, "We are mere mortals and they are the sun and moon," nodding over at Lucy, who took this light eye contact as an invitation, grabbed their hands, and dragged them into a whirling twirling dance both boys would have been desperate to avoid in another life.    
  
Susan dried her eyes with her sleeve behind the pillar that had hid her during their conversation. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop - and would later revise the scene in her head to being purely accidental in nature - but it was becoming so rare for her brothers to talk freely around her as if they were equals and she had a right to their inner thoughts and strange, boyish conclusions.    
  
There was something in Edmund's biting, self-deprecating wit, in Peter's solemn jokes, in Lucy's unrestrained enthusiasms, that Susan sometimes felt were her own limbs, cut off and given out to other bodies in order to teach her some sort of lesson about humility or loneliness or self-sufficiency.    
  
When she turned 21 for the second time, standing alone in a graveyard in an unseasonably cold rain, looking down at a row of tombstones, she thought back to those early Narnia years - of being alone in a castle, of her three stray limbs off growing themselves into full people without her... Susan Pevensie, once a Queen of Narnia, stood alone in a graveyard on her second 21st birthday and screamed and screamed and screamed until she fell to her knees in the mud and grass, screamed until her throat was raw and her voice was no longer recognizable, screamed until she was ushered into a car by strong arms she didn't recognize.    
  
They put her into a hospital, tubes in her arms and nose to keep her asleep, to keep her from hurting herself (she heard the nurses whispering between blissful foggy blackness). She was sitting up in bed, looking out the window at a red brick wall, wondering whether this terrible numbness she felt was the drugs or her new normal, when Mrs. Macready came bustling into her room, barking at her to get up that moment for she was taking her home.    
  
For another week she kept to her old room in the Professor's house, accepting the food Macready brought without a sound, her head buried in her knees where she curled up on the window seat. She felt as though it would be a very pleasant life to never speak again. The second week, she wordlessly pattered down the halls after Macready, stuck her hands in rich soil under the sun, went through the motion of being a person without any of the bother of speech. It felt warm and good, to be a bubble another body pushed about.    
  
She kept a list of things in her mind that she was not allowed to think about or dwell on during the day. She listed them out in a whisper after tucking herself into bed every night. The sound of her own voice hurt her more than the words some days. Those were the days she looked forward to.    
  
The Professor was dead.    
  
Jill was dead.    
  
Eustace was dead.    
  
Peter was dead.    
  
Lucy was dead.    
  
Her parents were dead. Mother and Father.    
  
Caspian had died so long ago she had never had the chance to mourn him properly. (Life, unfortunately, does not stop until it is done.)   
  
Edmund... Dear Edmund was dead.    
  
She was alive.    
  
She was alone.    
  
They had gone home without her and left her all alone.   
  
A lawyer came to her and went over quite a bit of papers. Macready sat in a corner of the Professor's study with knitting needles clacking rhythmically in her hands. Susan sat behind the Professor's sturdy oak desk and nodded silently as though words were not the most troublesome and slippery creatures in the universe. The squirrely little man coughed uncomfortably at each mention of her siblings, fidgeted in his seat, twirled a pen in his hands, and twice paused as though there was something for Susan to say. There wasn't.   
  
She was bored with him before a single word passed through the thin lips that pressed themselves into a smug grin as he introduced himself. As he spoke, she felt something tingling in her fingertips and toes as though something essential was being returned to her - the feeling of blood flow slowly returning to extremities after they have lost circulation after too long in one position. When the little man looked askance at Macready in the shadowy corner behind his right shoulder and intimated for the fourth time in twenty minutes that perhaps Susan would rather leave the business of her money in his capable hands while she underwent healing at a sanitarium in Bath, Susan felt a subtle weight settle on her brow and she smiled at him in a way that had made greater men than him kneel in supplication.   
  
Rising to her feet, Queen Susan, aged twenty-one for the second time in one lifetime, said slowly, "You will draw up papers to release all management of my property to me immediately and have them delivered via your superior by week's end. And sir. It would be in your best interest if I never saw your face again."   
  
She sat back down and picked up a pen, pulling out a page of stationary from the drawer as though she only ever sat at this desk to write her correspondence, and dismissed him with a mere bow of her head.    
  
Macready was beaming down at her, a tray of cookies and milk in her hands, a few minutes later when her head rose regally. "It's good to have you home in your own body once again, Miss Susan."    
  
Susan had the humility to blush. Macready sat the tray down on the desk and then herself down in the armchair the solicitor had recently vacated.    
  
"It's a strange business, all this tragedy," Macready said in a tone that suggested that she had always known exactly what had gone on in this large, old house. That shared knowledge created a cocoon around Susan that she had dearly lacked in the preceding days, though didn't come as much of a surprise as Macready seemed to have assumed it would.    
  
They sat in silence for a while longer, Susan chewing on the biscuits thoughtfully, unwilling to hear her own - changed - voice again so soon.    
  
"What will you do now, girl?" the needles seemingly having appeared from thin air during the interim and once again clacking in their customary manner, filling all the empty space with motion and practical domesticity.   
  
Susan smiled her new, angry smile, "Anything and everything I choose, darling."   
  
It was a dangerous time to be in the presence of a discarded Queen.   
  
Macready only nodded solemnly in approval, her eyes glinting in reflection to the anger that had finally taken hold of Susan's ageless heart.   
  
The facts were these:   
  
Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had never been particularly wealthy, but they had been smarter than most in their investments, with a college trust in each of their children's' names that should see each through their first - if not second - years of university. Neither had ever had the terrible thought that they would die before retirement and so had not updated their Last Wills and Testament since Susan's birth. But as the only surviving child... Everything was pretty much decided already. The little flat in London, the summer cabin in Scotland, everything was now Susan's.    
  
Professor Kirke was only the slightest bit different of a story. For, with age comes a certain amount of doomsday presumptions. According to the very slimy solicitor - and upon careful reading of the documents herself - it appeared as though shortly before the end of the Great War, he had revised his Will to pass along his property in equal parts to the Pevensie children.    
  
It wasn't a throne (it wasn't worth that line of tombstones all bearing her last name, none burying her), but it could be made into a kind of kingdom if that's what she wanted. 

 

And Macready was no royal adviser (she was frail now, something less of a guide and more of a stone around Susan’s neck) (it felt good, that weight) (it felt like something instead of nothing), but she  _ knew _ more than strangers could know.    
  


So they continued on - the left behind queen and the elderly housekeeper who knew too much but not enough - turned Kirke’s country home into an orphanage and left the running of it to a cheerful woman with rosy cheeks, and moved to a small cottage in Bath.

  
(It had never been what she wanted. But no one had asked her what she wanted.) 

 

(No one had  _ ever  _ asked her what she wanted.)   
  
  


  
  


Just over a year later, Susan greeted 1951 somewhere on the Atlantic with the sky burning with stars that were not her own overhead, a glass of whiskey in her hand, Macready buried next to her grandmother in an old churchyard in Scotland, and a letter of acceptance from Brown sitting in her cabin, the promise of a new life vibrating in the air around her. 

 

A new life that she never saw. 

 

For as she was staring out across the water, breathing in the cool scent of salt, the sounds of celebration filtering through the air, something rather unexpected happened. A shadow of a figure in a long coat and funny shoes came to stand next to her, there was something strange about him, something of the familiar but also something she couldn’t place. The way he moved reminded her of the old professor, as though he had at one timed learned to be a human in  _ this _ world, but had forgotten and been forced to learn it all over again. She caught her own reflection behaving in this peculiar way from time to time, as if expecting that movement itself could shift her through worlds back to where her body knew how to behave.

 

“Most women,” the stranger said with a grin and a biting tone that felt like an accusation, “look up at the stars on a night like this.”

 

There were so many answers to that Susan didn’t quite know where to begin. Witty, playful, flirty?  _ I’m not like most women _ . Biting, sarcastic, annoyed.  _ Most gentlemen don’t interrupt a woman in thought. _ Teasing, nonchalant, silly, childish.  _ I keep hoping to see a whale or dolphins, do you think I will? _ Or just an eyeroll and a sip of her champagne, conveying:  _ you are of no interest to me _ .

 

The unexpected moment was in Susan’s own response. 

 

“I dislike looking at stars that are strangers,” she said solemnly, the words passing over her lips and tongue solidly enough, though the sound of her own voice was strange and felt as though it was coming from somewhere slightly to the left of herself. 

 

The stranger shifted, a hum of  _ knowing _ leaving him just before he stood upright, straight and tall, a look of general shock on his face passing into her vision just before he knocked her out. 

 

She woke up on his ship several days later, after he had expended all of the tests he could think of and had determined that (a) she was human, (b) she was  _ not _ alien, (c) she was not a robot full of miniaturized people intent on saving the world, (d) she was not a robot full of miniaturized people intent on destroying the world, (e) she did not pose a threat to anyone, really, and lastly that she was without a doubt a stranger to the time and place he found her and therefore probably wouldn’t be too offended by his kidnapping her.

 

“What stars belong to you?” were the first words she heard upon waking up. 

 

And she cried, truly angrily cried with snot and tears running down her face and her chest heaving and every part of her shaking with the cruelty of her own pain and sadness and mourning and disgust. 

 

She had so believed, in that moment between consciousness and opening her eyes, that she had been found and taken home. 

 

Only to find a stranger staring down at her, with no idea who or what she was. 

 

And she cried, as a stranger held her tight, burying her face into his chest, she cried in the most real way than at any moment since her siblings and parents had died and left her so terribly, terribly alone. And even though everything before her now was broken dreams and empty promises and lost queens, the arms that held her shook with the knowledge of the same loss as her own. 

 

Understanding.

 

She found true, deep understanding in a stranger in the first moments of a new year and it was as close as she would ever get to being home again.

 

“You  _ are _ a mystery, aren’t you girl?” He’d beamed at her after an early adventure, when He still had hope of fixing things and putting her back in the place where she belonged. 

 

“I am neither of those things,” she’d said coolly, “I am a Queen not a girl.”

 

She never told him the second thing she was. Because she hadn’t decided on it yet herself. Not for the sake of mystery, or some inner conflict, but because she was still lost after all… and lost Queens without a kingdom and without a family and somehow never in the right body exactly, should be allowed the space and time to redefine themselves on their own terms.  

 

Understanding. 

 

She found true, deep understanding in a stranger for a brief moment, not of what she  _ was _ , but of all the things she  _ wasn’t _ . 

 

In a tavern deep beneath a world hungry for a cure to its own state of being, a girl asked her breathlessly, “What is your lack?” Susan had answered her with a hungry kiss and fingers and hands where they could do the most good, and never answered because she was tired of the answer. 

 

All the things she wasn’t and wanted to be, all the things that she was. 

 

What did she lack?

 

The answer she didn’t know,  _ What do you own? _

 

Memories, ghosts without ghosts, stories without endings, lost languages trapped on her tongue, a body that grew into a shape she didn’t recognize, knowledge she had no use for, a reflection she didn’t recognize, a home that couldn’t be found. 

 

Despite His mad dash from star system to history to future to star after star, he could not find her home. In the beginning, he had thought she was only lost - that He was the shadow and she was something-only-bruised. 

 

_ Dead _ , whispered the hologram-girl with large eyes and an elfish quality in the sharp points of her nose and cheekbones and smile, with a finger pressed against her lips, on Susan’s first night with them.  _ Dead _ , a secret not to be told.  _ Dead _ , a truth she never wanted to know she knew all along. 

 

_ Dead _ , a message from a girl who was impossible, who who had died so many thousands of times she made herself into a box. A message from the echo of a girl He had not yet met and would never fully know. 

 

No one likes their reflection to walk around in flesh and blood, eating their food and sleeping in their bed. 

 

And so they let Him believe that Susan was a riddle that could be solved if only he was clever enough. And so they let Him believe that Susan was there with Him and not for the soul of a girl not yet found and yet already so far gone as to no longer being a girl at all, which in the end gave her so much more in common with Susan than the alternative. 

 

No one likes their reflection to remind them that some wounds don’t heal.

 

The day He resigned himself to the truth, He took her small hand in his large one and said, “I had always thought it was too painful to be possible, another creature from a dead world.”

 

She’d laughed and kissed him sweetly, for everything about them was sweet and soft in those days, and didn’t say anything at all. Of all the things she could have said, not a one of them wasn’t cruel to one of them and she didn’t have the heart to be cruel, especially to things she loved.

 

She was Queen Susan the Gentle, after all. 

 

_ What else are you _ , she asked after He’d gone off to a hidden corner to brood,  _ have you decided yet? _

 

It’s one thing to decide that you are  _ not  _ a mystery girl, it’s quite another to decide what you  _ are _ . And no Queen has ever settled for being one thing alone. 

 

Susan looked up at the girl perched on the edge of the tub, smirking down at her like she always did, the history of a thousand stars in her eyes, “What else are  _ you _ ?”

 

Sometimes it was lonely, having a hologram girl for a lover, an intangible whisper of motion in the corner of her eye, but nothing solid to sink into. Sometimes it was more intoxicating than anything flesh and blood could possibly contrive. In that moment, Susan looked up into the sparkling eyes and wondered for the first time how it must feel to be as solid as starlight, but full - overflowing - with feeling. 

 

_ Whatever else you are, _ came a whisper finally,  _ it is buried in all of those cruel instincts you pretend to hide from yourself _ .

 

Susan raised a glass of whiskey in salute, “And you, my love, are everything and anything in the moment you desire it... and in the end nothing at all.”

 

She didn’t see the girl for many days after that and when they finally circled back to each other, they were much more gentle with each other than they ever had felt they needed to be. They were both shadows of the same desperate, grasping, dangerous thing - what could possibly hurt them?

 

Everything. 

 

When a woman is forged through fire and faith and steel to win wars and hearts and minds, well… what is a warrior without a war? What is a Queen without her kingdom?

 

What is a believer without their faith?

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. the things we love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Listen... idk... Michael and Mrs. Michael Darling wanted their own chapter so... here you go?

Michael didn’t necessarily like to be out of the house during the domestic hubbub of the household’s morning routine. Unlike his peers, there was something desperately important to him in the mundane facts of his children and the way they greeted every day. The tears over porridge and arguments over toys at the breakfast table and serious discussions between them as to who was owed marbles or who was better at climbing trees. 

 

These moments at the breakfast table with his newspaper in hand and the children, his  _ own children _ , bustling around him like he was so much furniture and no great consequence to their games and battles, were the moments he genuinely lived for. Their voices rising in anger or amusement or in mock-serious tones that would have put Parliament to shame. Their games and knick-knacks and alliances and strange humors and stranger ideas. 

 

Most of the  _ ton _ avoided these displays, primarily by keeping any children hidden in attic nurseries with their nurses for every meal and only brought out for mild moments in a set-aside sitting room. 

 

Michael insisted the nursery be put on the main floor, wedged between his study and his wife’s drawing room. They moved the library to the third floor and added a narrow staircase into the nursery at his wife’s insistence. After the birth of their third, his wife moved her drawing room to the front of the house, claiming with all the venom her throaty alto could muster that the view of a dank city street was preferable to the shrieks of a newborn as she was taking her tea. Michael kissed her forehead and said it was a capital idea. 

 

The breakfast room was moved to look over the garden next to the nursery and from that moment, Michael insisted on taking breakfast with the children. 

 

His wife received a tray in her room with dry toast and coffee long after the children were already hard at work on their lessons and Michael was on his third round of tea. 

 

Had he been allowed, Michael would have taken the tray up to her himself, with the society column under one arm and an extra cup of tea for himself, perched himself on the edge of her bed and teased her as he buttered her toast for her, played with her dark curls as she drank her coffee deeply like the outrageous Yank that she was, lounged on her sofa as she began her fashionable ministrations before dragging himself out reluctantly to meet with a solicitor. 

 

Had he been allowed. 

 

He had attempted it once, after they had come home from their honeymoon tour, and was greeted with tears. Apparently it was one thing to enjoy breakfast in bed with your wife on honeymoon, with red pillow lines on her cheek and eyes squinting out at the sun and long hair in two thick braids hanging over her shoulders, and quite another to be a regular appearance while at home. 

  
Even after all this time, and in spite of the appearances that his wife made sure were air-tight, Michael still believed that dawn was a magical time. The sunrise and the softness of a new day, the way the world looked through bleary eyes, was something he dearly loved. And upon the occasion of

becoming a husband and father - he found the pleasure of watching his personal Darlings embracing each day to be akin to a religious experience. The closest he would ever again get to the eternity he saw so clearly as a child. 

He had attempted it once, to explain this feeling of beginnings and breakfast, to his little wife. But the look of complete confusion and fear on her face had caused him to laugh it off, tussle her hair as he strode out the door. There was nothing of the fae in his little wife, nothing of poetry or whimsy, and damnit he loved her and the light freckles across the bridge of her nose with a passion that would have further confused her. 

Some things can’t be helped. 

Sometimes we are not our soul mate’s perfect match. Sometimes the Perfect Girl was made for us but something along the way made it impossible for us to be perfect for her. 

When his wife was a child, she lived in a house with a father and mother and a charming dog and three siblings that she loved and loves to this day a  _ proper  _ amount. When he was a child, Michael lived in a nursery with a sister who told stories of a boy and when they lived that story and made it true, it changed them all. 

He loved his wife. But he had stopped being the boy that was made for  _ her _ so, so long ago. 

And that couldn’t really be helped, could it?

Michael didn’t particularly like to be out of the house before breakfast, but despite his siblings’ ne’er-do-well lifestyles, there was a consistency in their schedules that he had found: their morning rides through Hyde Park on Wednesdays and Saturdays were an event the London Tower could have set time to. He fully believed that after their long rides, John fell into his own bed for the first time since the morning previous and Wendy …. Michael didn’t quite know what Wendy’s schedule looked like after dawn, only that it was even more impossible to pin down than John’s and potentially more riske. 

What his siblings spoke about on their morning rides when he wasn’t present, was also something Michael didn’t care to spend too much time in speculation. It was enough that they appeared to spend a great deal of time together. 

It was enough that there was a space and time where he could catch them, wind wild through his hair and the sound of Wendy’s unwomanly whoops over the horses’ hooves beating against the ground. It was enough that there was one thing that he could still share with them - without feeling like they were, once again, sharing far too much and not enough. 

Rain, wind, snow, and fog and still they rode, his wild siblings. And they never said - not when Michael was present - the one thing that they all thinking. 

_ It’s not like flying. But it will do _ .

Though sometimes he saw the sentiment in Wendy’s crooked smile she flung over her shoulder at him like the way his heart stuttered at the sight cost her nothing at all. And sometimes he saw the thought in his brother’s sad eyes, staring straight through him as though it was Michael that was the intangible dream they could no longer see nor catch. 

Michael didn’t particularly like missing the stream of activity over the breakfast table, there was magic in his children’s small moments and every day brought them closer to losing it, to following in the footsteps of their little mother, to begrudging him his stories of pirates and aboriginal girls fiercer than any lion. They were growing up and soon they would be gone, their little magics slipping through his fingers like sand. 

“Where’s Becca?” John asked accusingly, trotting up on Violet, a shadow of hair on his jawline betraying his late night. 

Michael only scowled in return, needing for the moment to maintain the upper hand, to be the adult, to not admit that  _ damnit _ ,  _ why didn’t I bring the girl _ ?

Wendy led her mare out on foot, tucking her long hair back with one hand, “Her seventh is next month, that’s plenty old enough to come out with us, Baby.” 

“You’d frighten her and worse that wild animal you call domesticated would frighten the girl’s pony half to death,” Michael groused. 

He’d wanted to smile at his sister, agree, be agreeable… but he just… 

Wendy laughed and John winced at the high-pitched sound, a hangover clearly imminent, “Now Baby we’d do no such thing,” her mount whinnied and shook it’s powerful head as she settled onto her seat - astride - in a pair of breeches specially made for her lithe form. “May would behave if I told her to and John would keep his political diatribes to himself, wouldn’t you?”

“She’s bloody damn well old enough, a god knows that harpy nurse your wife hired already has her at her lessons at this ungodly hour,” John pulled a flask out of his breast pocket and took a swig. 

“If you had your way with my children, John, they’d all been given over to sis the moment they were weaned and I’d have no hand in raising them at all,” Michael spit out, angry at his brother for preferring his children over his company. Angry at himself for not thinking to bring his daughter before this moment. Angry at them all for arguing on such a beautiful, misty-grey moment, where it seemed as though Never could be over the breast of any hill. 

Wendy’s face whitened and John smirked. 

Michael had lost the upper hand. 

“Darlings don’t let’s fight on such a gorgeous morning,” Wendy pleaded, her eyes darting between the two, her mount growing suddenly still in the midst of so much tension. “How about Saturday I ride my speckled June and bring the dogs and have Mrs. Hubbard make a picnic breakfast and we’ll make a party of it for Becca? We’ll go slow and start later and have a gay old time?” She paused and cleared her throat, and Michael felt a tingling sense of awareness that maybe John’s jibe was not only directed at him. “It’ll be a Darling birthday breakfast, and we’ll tell the young ones it’ll be their turn at seven as well…?”

John leaned over Violet’s head, patting her between the ears, and smiled so wide, Michael felt as though his skin may peel away from his skull it was stretched so tight.

Wendy tossed her head and spurred May into a trot, leaving her brothers behind. 

“That was cruel of you,” Michael said softly, gesturing towards Wendy. “Are you truly so angry with me that you chose to break her heart as well?”

John flushed, “She raised you, gave more than an ass like you deserves, and you keep your children behind lock and key, keep her out of your nursery same as Father did to her.” His voice came out strangled and low, some unspoken anger lingering behind his words. 

“And you?” Michael shot back, thinking of his happy breakfast nook full of children and light and noise that he had abandoned for siblings that could no longer see him. 

“Me?”

“Where’s your nursery full of nieces and nephews for Wendy to spoil with stories that can’t come true?”

John laughed, threw back his head and shouted with a full belly. 

Michael fought to keep his mount steady, waiting desperately for an answer to a question that plagued him. Why had he been the only one to grow up? Why didn’t he have nieces and nephews to visit and spoil and watch sprout length and height next to his own breed, squishy babies in a row on the floor crashing into each other and growing up together as their parents had. Why did he alone seem to long for the nursery so much that he built an entire house and life around the project of filling one up with noise and stories and bodies? Why was he always alone with his dreams?

But it didn’t matter, John threw his hands up with a mighty shout that propelled Violet into a gallop down the hill to meet Wendy somewhere in the mist and fog. Leaving Michael behind to either race ahead as well or stay behind. 

Michael lingered in the stables after John had kissed Wendy farewell, shouting something about luncheon at the club over his shoulder that was presumably for her ears only. Their sister had a penchant for wild, unbreakable things. Dogs with scars and agitated personalities, cats with missing eyes, children with smiles that could kill and eyes that haunted. Horses that shied away from any touch but hers. 

He watched as she first brushed down May, humming a song he remembered the merpeople teaching her in Never, a click of her tongue all she needed to keep herself safe. Then she visited several other stalls with residents under her care. Large noses nudging her hand for the apples and sugar she kept on hand for them, eyes rolling when she laughed at them as though they were all speaking an unwritten language. Michael hovered in the background, his gloves in his hand, patting against his thigh restlessly to the beat of Wendy’s song. Their ride had ended early enough for him to get home and enjoy the last moments of breakfast in the garden-facing room. 

The truth was: Michael didn’t particularly like to be out of the house before breakfast, because there was a magic in those moments that kept him coming back. 

He knew, deep in his heart, that there was more of him that longed desperately to race through Hyde Park on one of Wendy’s wild stallions, whooping in a hidden language with John, than there were bones in his body. Breakfast, he’d told the opposing wall of a Catholic confessional once, a task he’d never done nor do again, was his drug, his snuff, his reason to walk back through the front door every evening. There was magic in his children gathered around the breakfast table that kept him alive, and he feared the day it was taken away. 

What would he be then?

No longer admitted into the wild world of his siblings, no longer having children around him to keep him fresh and young, what would he be?

He’d left without an answer from the priest. 

He didn’t avoid his siblings, his dark-hearted sister and his charmingly sad brother, so much as he feared losing himself in them. He had to be strong. For someday, sooner than he’d like, they’d need someone to catch them as they fell. If he tried to fly, who would catch any of them?

After an hour or so, leaning here and there while watching Wendy scold horses and tease stable boys, she thread her arm through his and he found himself in her carriage and then in her private sitting room eating soft cheese with apples and warm bread while she dried her freshly-washed hair by the fire. 

It all happened so quickly, the ride to her home, a maid bustling about him so that he didn’t notice his sister’s absence, and then hot cocoa and biscuits and cheese and all manner of treats that made him feel young again. There was only the two of them, her in a dressing gown curled up on an Indian carpet on the ground with bare toes and an infectious laugh, and him still stinking of horses and hay in riding clothes on a squishy sofa his wife would detest, and yet the room felt more  _ alive _ than his entire domicile in the midst of the children playing Blindman’s Bluff. 

He stared down at his sister for a moment, blinking the stars out of his eyes, “How did we end up here, mother-girl?”

Her eyes softened with an unspoken sadness he’d never before seen so plainly laid out before, realizing for the first time how much she was still protecting him, “Well Baby, you decided to grow up and did such a good job of it, I’ve nearly forgotten that you liked to play at all.” She giggled a little and then sighed, wrapping her arms around her knee and looking up at him as though suddenly she was no older than Becca or the twins, “I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry we don’t play the same games anymore.”

He’d meant that room and that day, but getting to the root of the answer was what she had always done best. 

“No one ever taught you how to play, not really,” Michael said, leaning back against the sofa and taking a long drink of chocolate. “Father always told you it was a Must Do and mother always told you it was a No Choice. If they’d only told you it was just another game…”

Wendy laughed hollowly. 

And he felt as though he’d ruined the moment and them and everything. That she’d never let him back into her dark room with bright lanterns and foreign fruit and spiced chocolate. 

That he’d exposed a secret she had never wanted the answer to. 

“I think I’ll send Becca to you this summer when the younger children go with their mother to the country,” he made it sound as though it was a thought he’d been mulling over for weeks instead of only a few hours. “I know a child in the house will put a hitch in your state of fashion, but…” he glanced at her over the edge of his mug and his heart tugged at the tears forming in the corners of her eyes, looking away quickly as if he hadn’t noticed, “... the damn girl is far too serious for her own good and needs a bit of whimsy in her life. Her mother may be a lot of wonderful things, but whimsical isn’t one of them.”

It would cause a fight at home. Some tears. On every side. The twins were rather attached to their eldest sibling. 

Growing up was a game.  _ And quite frankly _ , Michael thought to himself as he walked home that afternoon, _ damn the rules _ . 

 

 

 

 

“Whyever would he say such a thing?” Mrs. Michael Darling sat primly on the little pink chair she preferred in her mother-in-law’s sitting room and waved away the third offer of tea from a rather distracting looking maid. Mrs. Michael Darling was trying very hard not to raise her voice, her mother - god rest her soul - had taught her from a young age to  _ never _ raise her voice, especially in the hearing of servants. 

The elder Mrs. Darling sat in a mirror of primness in the little blue chair that she personally did  _ not _ prefer, honestly she’d rather be elbow-deep in the roses at an hour like this but Mrs. Michael - bless her Yankee heart - did not fare well in the crisp garden air of an English spring. “I’m honestly surprised it hadn’t occurred to him before now, must have lost a bet with John-dear at the races.”

Mrs. Michael Darling sniffed, dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief daintily. “Rebecca is much, much too young to be spending so much time out of the house. Oh can’t you help me see Mr. Darling to reason?”

Mrs. Darling tried not to roll her eyes. It was catastrophically ridiculous the way the young girl insisted on calling her husband  _ Mr. Darling _ even among family. Really, she’d born the man four children and lived in his house for six years, she wondered if the little wife called him  _ Mister _ even in the privacy of their bedchambers. It was uncanny. Mrs. Darling coughed and tried to think of what to say, but was saved by a whirlwind of dogs and laughter and her only daughter. 

  
“Oh mother, it’s such a grand old day,” Wendy strode in with the long-legged gait of a man typical of her now that she had her own household, her hair wind-swept under her hat and a bit of mud on the train of her afternoon dress, “I’ve come with news and poems and presents for you and father both! Some of those ridiculous cheese biscuits Mrs. Hubbard makes specially for Father like the oldest bribe since Troy,” a greasy brown paper bag found itself in Mrs. Darling’s lap as Wendy bustled about the room. “I cannot believe that you are keeping inside when the weather is so lovely - oh hello, Darling - and honestly,” she flung open the shades Mrs. Michael had insisted be shut due to a terrible headache and began cranking open the larger window, “your roses are in such a state, I brought over some compost for it and sent Trixie with it out to the backyard… oh I’m  _ so glad _ Trixie is

getting on for you, I was ever so worried that she’d sneak off to that blacksmith again and I’d be nursing babies this Christmas while she cried over - oh thank you Lizzie,” she took a cup of tea from the kitchen girl and patted her bottom as she scurried out the door, “- and… lovely tea, mother - is this that elegant blooming stuff John brought back from Turkey last year, I plum ran out so quickly and  _ mother _ ,” Wendy threw herself onto the sofa, her legs outstretched in front of her, hat tugged off and tossed into a corner where one of her dogs immediately began gnawing on it, “I’m sure Darling is here to ask you to help us beg Baby off on this ridiculous scheme John-dear goaded him into on our ride this morning, has she told you?”

Mrs. Darling laughed, digging into the bag of treats and plucking out a biscuit for herself before Mr. Darling ate them all up. There was more than one source for her children’s penchant for rich foods. 

Mrs. Michael Darling sat in a still shock for a few moments, unsure whether to double-down on her tears or reign the whole spectacle back into something more reasonable. She was adverse to emotional displays as a rule, but had found mild performances worked wonders with the Darlings. Despite appearances, the whole clan was rather obtuse, wearing all their emotions on their sleeves like a badge of honor. It was a fact that she rather hated not knowing in her husband before their wedding night and did her best to wean out of her children when possible. 

“Oh Darling” Wendy continued before either woman had a chance to decide how to proceed, “really of course Bex is far too young to be away from her mother for so long, don’t you agree mother? Why Baby was being preposterous and condescending as usual, making such a decision without discussing it with you -- for it was clear in his tone that he had not discussed it with you - and, oh mother don’t eat all those biscuits before father has a bite or I’ll never hear the end of it - and in cases like this us girls really ought to stick together.”

Mrs. Darling cleared her throat, plucking the spectacles that lay on a chain across her chest and placed them on the bridge of her nose, “Now, while I agree that Michael  _ should _ always discuss domestic matters over with you first, it is a splendid idea after all and why shouldn’t little Becca spend a week or two on an adventure with her aunt?”

“ _ Rebecca _ should not be singled out so and so young--” she was attempting every play in the book, had written down every argument she had in the carriage on the way over. 

“Oh Darling,” Wendy giggled, “Bex is the oldest girl! Why, she’ll always be singled out! She needs a tour of the Continent and a coming-out and a marriage proposal long before the babies, otherwise who will pave the way? I often wished I’d had an older cousin or sister to do all these ridiculous things ahead of me so that I wouldn’t have to be in the spotlight so much, have a peer to explain it all that I can trust. Jimmy will have Mick... and Lizzy no doubt will outshine everyone the way John-dear brags about her. Bex well... “ Wendy looked blankly at her mother, no longer sure of what words or sentiment should come next. 

Mrs. Michael Darling bristled at the absurd nicknames her sister-in-law insisted on using for her carefully-named children, and nearly missed the meat of the argument. 

“And who  _ will _ accompany Becca on her tour, if not Wendy?” Mrs. Darling queried in a soft tone. “Father and I are unfortunately lacking in matronly great-aunts to do the honors and a friend won’t do, and your brothers are all quite occupied.” She pursed her lips, bright eyes twinkling in such a way that Mrs. Michael felt as though she were being teased, “Surely it’s high time Wendy and Becca become accustomed to each other on their own terms so that their future travels won’t be awkward?”

Wendy’s mouth had fallen open in a ridiculous fashion, she was staring at her mother in such a way that suggested she might keel over in a faint or possibly begin laughing hysterically. 

Mrs. Michael Darling’s face was bright red with rage, “ _ Rebecca _ deserves far better than the dubious chaperonage of  _ her _ .” She hissed out her words meanly, taking the other two women (and herself) by surprise. “If I were to allow my eldest daughter in the care of a woman who will no doubt ruin her reputation beyond repair before their ship had left the harbor why…” she stilled for a moment as Wendy rose slowly but steadily off the sofa. Mrs. Michael grinned in an awful, terrifying way, “I might as well hand  _ Rebecca _ over to the painted girls that John prefers over polite society.”

Wendy looked down at her for a moment, her face so soft and kind Mrs. Michael wondered if she’d ever really met her sister-in-law, truly; and then fought the instinct to sink back into the chair until it swallowed her whole as Wendy walked the few paces to stand just over her, genuinely believing that the hero of all of her husband’s stories was truly a pirate who would strike her down in an instant with a weapon hidden in her bodice. 

“Oh Darling,” Wendy whispered, lifting the chin of the only sister she had ever known with one long finger, “how dearly I  _ love _ you.”

She kissed her softly on the lips, with all the affection of a sibling, and then disappeared out of the sitting room, leaving Mrs. Michael Darling shuddering with unshed tears. 

“She really is a giant among men,” Mrs. Darling said with forced cheerfulness and not a little bit of awe, and the tone more than anything is what drove the tears out of Mrs. Michael’s hiding places and rolling down her cheeks like spring rain on a windowpane. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Michael stared moodily into a glass of scotch. 

Through his mind ran a variety of scenarios, each less plausible than the last, though most of which contained a scene of his wife standing next to a short, fat solicitor with a handlebar mustache as they handed him divorce papers. Mrs. Michael Darling was not wont to large displays, and a divorce would no doubt be the strongest antithesis to her nature, but then… 

He took a large swallow and closed his eyes, leaning back in his chair, as the delightful burning sensation travelled down his throat, into his toes, and back towards his belly.

… but then what do you suppose could possibly be the natural result of his wife, mother, and sister all un-attended by the menfolk and left to their own devices just an hour after the loudest row he and his wife had ever had. 

He’d - of course - thought to go to his father for some manly advice after the whole business of Becca’s summer visit with Wendy turned into a shouting match in his study, only to ride over to his childhood home and see not only his own carriage out front, but Wendy’s little housemaid knitting on the front stoop! He’d sat there on his horse, stupefied, for as long as he dared - hoping that in that time another visitor -  _ anyone _ \- would interrupt whatever  tête-à-tête was happening inside, while also knowing that while Dorcus sat there busily making herself at home in full view of the street, none of the society matrons would dare enter the Darling residence. 

And then, like the coward he was, he hied off to the club and drunk himself silly with a chap that seemed of the rough-and-tumble sort that John would have approved of and honestly had a jolly time. Afterwhich, he stole into his own study like a thief in the night, winding through back hallways and whispering to servants in the guise of a game. 

Now. 

Now, here he was, so deep in his cups that he would be an absolute fright in the morning. Still stewing over an event that may or may not have even happened. 

A smart man - a man like his brother John - would have gone directly to Wendy’s home, sat in her cozy little sitting room with one of her strange books, teasing sweets out of the Hubbard-woman, until she came home and set everything right in that way that she had. But he was not a smart man. And he did not like the idea of running to Wendy whenever he had a heartache. 

Yes, she had soothed his wounds more times than he could count, but he had his own children in his own nursery to care for and could not run off like a child when… 

Though of course the truth of the matter, it came to him in his inebriated state when he could not protect himself from it, was that it was his own Mrs. Michael Darling to whom he should run with every scratch and bruise upon his heart. He didn’t. 

“Dear old girl,” he said aloud - though Wendy herself was nowhere in hearing, “I’m following the wrong sort of rules for any game to come of me.”

A laugh rang back to him from the air where he had supposed there was nothing and no one. 

Michael blinked up at his wife, sitting perched in a most friendly way on the edge of his desk, looking down at him with soft, loving eyes the likes of which he hadn’t seen since their honeymoon. 

“Darling?” he croaked, the shock and disbelief that she would be there at all leading him to call her by the only name Wendy would acknowledge, and the one his wife had always disliked. 

She smiled down at him, “Oh husband-dear, why does Wendy call me that? And will the females in your clan ever stop naming you Baby as though you were still in skirts?”

Michael rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and then looked back up, “A vision, Darling. It is because you are a vision and I am a fool.” He point a finger at her in a stern approximation of a fatherly lecture, “They know me better than you do, perhaps we should trust their judgement.”

There was a lightness in his being at this mystical, apparition of his wife - something like the ease of his siblings with a hint of that  _ something _ more that is mundanely called “romance” though to Michael in this moment was a poem no one had heard but him. He smiled broadly at her, knowing that it made him look foolish and not caring for - she wasn’t real; and then buried his head in her lap, large hands gripping at her waist and hips.

Her long fingers began to play with his hair, softly at first - as though an imaginary wife can be apprehensive, “Mi-- … Michael?”

“Mmmm… yes Darling?”

“Do you really think that life is a game and you are playing with the wrong rules?”

He thought long and hard, as hard as his muddled mind would allow. 

Mrs. Michael Darling nearly thought that he’d fallen asleep, the way his whole body had stilled under her hands, reminding her of their little Micah’s hot, sweaty body wrapped around her waist in sleep. She hadn’t meant to ask the question, but the sadness in his voice before he’d realized she was there with him had broken her heart in a way she did not previously know was possible. She hadn’t decided whether it was preferable that he fall asleep and always believe that this strange interlude had never occurred outside his own drunken thoughts, or that he gave an answer, when he decided for her. 

“She told me a story once, about a wolf and a raven who argued over who lived life in the best way and both went off to teach villages their ways only to see who was right. The wolf was rigid with his people, they worked all day and night, kept to tight schedules, ate the same foods every day at the same precise time. It was a productive village, they had the most food and clothing and sturdy structures. The raven taught his village to play and sing and dance, every night was a festival and every day was a party. Very little work was done, but the village was beautiful and vibrant, full of art and color and music…” Michael’s voice drifted off into either the memory or into another space in his mind that he had previously kept away from his little wife.

A thousand questions buzzed in the air between them, most of them she wasn’t quite sure either of them were ready to ask or deal with the answers. 

“It didn’t work, you know…” his grip tightened slightly on her waist. “We’re just two sides of the same problem, John the raven and me the wolf and damn it all but I thought it would be easier this way.” 

His head popped up out of her lap and he looked at her half-curiously, half-accusingly. 

“Are you  _ real _ ?” he peered up at her.

“Do you want me to be?” she held her breath, her fingers still holding loosely to the tips of his hair. 

“No,” he said soberly, then shook his head. “Yes… I’m not sure, Darling Darling.” He grinned and then pouted, “Do you want to be real?”

Mrs. Darling Kitty Darling had never been so unsure of anything in her short, mundane life. Did she want to be  _ real _ ? Why would such a question from a drunk man slobbering tears into her lap like a child tear at her with such voracity? 

Michael tapped his wife’s chest and whispered, “We must find your raven, Darling. Mine too, damnit. There’s too many bloody wolves under this roof.”

Darling dropped her hands to her lap and that fear that always hounded her reared it’s ugly head in her chest. The rules and guidelines she had set out for herself and her life had always kept that dangerous inner demon at bay, and now here her husband was implying she had to set it loose. Become a raven? Hah. Sing and dance and play without thought? Then, what would she be?

Michael lifted a hand to his wife’s cheek, cupping it gently, “I always imagined my wife would look like her, you know? First love and all that, the infatuation of a child made manifest in the man” he waved his other hand in the air dismissively. “But you are just  _ Darling _ and I’m so glad.”

“Wendy?” the word more a sigh than a question. 

For the third time that evening, her husband looked up at her with wounded eyes, eyes that said  _ don’t you know me at all? _ and that burning accusation  _ do you want to be Real? _ somehow at the same time. 

Was she real? Or had she always just been another rule in Michael’s desperate gamble to be the wolf in a family full of ravens? Another impediment to him being who he truly was? Did she really hold that much sway, was she truly happy fighting against the tide of their darkest secrets? Was she an anchor or a woman?

“Tiger Lily…” Michael murmured after a moment, stroking her cheek with one finger. 

After a moment he shook his head like a great shaggy dog waking up or climbing out of a river and drew away from her, leaving Darling empty and cold. “You’re real… You’re…” he barked out a laugh that was so like his brother’s it shook her. “You’re sitting on my desk, Darling.”

She smiled and shrugged.

It wasn’t everything, but it was a start. Maybe. 

“Who is Tiger Lily?” 

Michael stood up unsteadily, swaying a bit more than necessary under the weight of so much scotch, then squinted at her and attempted a wink that in action was just a lot of rapid blinking, “I’ll let Jamesina do the honors. She tells the story best.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
